Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion DS loves advanced math concepts but not practicing

I know there are some more mathy people than myself on this board, so I hope they will chime in. For us, DD9 is similar in not wanting to repeat things over and over. It drove her nuts last year in school when the teachers didn't want to give her new stuff until she had 'perfected' the older topics, so they just kept making her do multiplication and division with more digits and if she got anything wrong they would say, see, she doesn't know it--she needs more practice, and she needs to correct *all* of her mistakes before moving on, so she never got beyond 4 digits--can you imagine doing that all year?? They kept saying they would give her more advanced stuff but never did. (maybe 5 digits? ridiculous) She hated it. We've had more success afterschooling with EPGY, starting when that stuff was happening (although EPGY does have its glitches), and one thing I like is that it keeps cycling the problems back around and if you miss the answers it will give you more of that kind of problem in the future, while if you get them right it will move on more quickly (or at least that is what is supposed to happen, and how it seems, although it varies from course to course). But it's really more about teaching techniques, like (in the algebra course) factoring polynomials for example rather than teaching or even discussing theory. I'm trying to supplement with books but it's difficult because I can't answer any questions that might come up and I feel like maybe DD could go farther if I could, but she seems content at least for now so I haven't pushed it. Since your DS is so advanced, I think it's great that he has a tutor because it seems like that one-on-one instruction from a good teacher is what is really valuable in inspiring a love of math and theory. I think making a kid like that drill until they get everything right first might cause them to lose interest in math altogether--unless he's really not able to understand the next topic because he didn't really grasp the previous one. I guess that might be hard to sort out, but maybe a different tutor would be able to understand this distinction and inspire your kid to go a lot farther. I feel like I can teach my DD the mechanics of math but I don't know enough about theory to either teach or to inspire her, but for her I'm not sure that's where she would be going anyway--it sounds like your DS might be really wanting to go there, so I hope he does. Good luck!